The present invention relates to cooking appliances and, more particularly, to a food serving set for use with a roasting oven or other similar deep well cooker including a collapsible supporting rack, which can be folded and/or disassembled for storage and/or packaging within the roasting oven.
Electric cooking pots for preparing and serving hot foods are well known in the prior art. Such cooking pots typically include a deep well member and a heating element arranged in functional relation thereto for supplying heat. Such cooking pots may be provided with compartmented trays, which are disposed within the interior space of the cooker for maintaining food in a ready-to-eat condition.
However, such compartmented trays are not convenient for the storage of leftover food items due to size constraints within a typical refrigerator. Further, such serving trays are not conveniently packaged at the time of manufacture due to the lack of available space within the interior cavity of the roasting oven and as a result must be packaged and shipped separately, which increases manufacturing costs.
Thus, the present invention has been developed to resolve this problem and other shortcomings of the prior art.
U.S. Design Pat. Nos. 230,243; 283,666; 284,727; 305,855; 358,292; and 431,149 disclose cooking appliances and/or compartmented trays of generally similar subject matter in this field of art. However, only the ornamental appearance is illustrated for these devices and no technical disclosure or functional details are discernable.
While these devices fulfill their respective, particular objectives and requirements, the aforementioned patents do not disclose the present invention. The present inventive device comprises a food serving set including a plurality of individual food containers suitable for storage, heating and serving of food items. The food containers are designed to reside in a collapsible supporting rack within the interior space of a roasting oven or other deep well cooker during use. The food containers are suitable for refrigerator storage of leftover food items being provided with sealable lids. The supporting rack may be folded and/or disassembled for storage within the interior space of the deep well cooker after use or during packaging.
In these respects the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art, and in so doing provides an apparatus primarily developed for the purpose of food service and storage. Advantageously, the present food serving set is conveniently stored and packaged within the interior space of the cooker.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a serving set for use with a roasting oven or other similar deep well cooker comprised of a plurality of individual containers for maintaining food items in a ready-to-eat condition. The individual food containers are suitable for refrigeration of food items. The present serving set features a collapsible supporting rack, which positions such individual containers within the deep well cooker while in use. In one embodiment the supporting rack is foldable for convenient storage of the serving set within the cavity of the roasting oven. In an alternative embodiment the supporting rack may be easily disassembled for storage using a latching mechanism for the users convenience. In yet another alternative embodiment the collapsible supporting rack is replaced by peripheral supporting flanges, which are integrally formed on the individual food containers to support them within the deep well cooker.
Other features and technical advantages of the present invention will become apparent from a study of the following description and the accompanying drawings.